Agent particulars: Mike Fisher, Lancaster

Cordell Marks interviews the Lancashire estate agent about his home

'The thing with estate agents is that you become very picky when choosing a home. I think I've seen only three properties in 10 years that I would happily move into and one of them is the house we're in now.

"It was built about 1680, very much a yeoman farmhouse, and since then it has been through various changes, the most pertinent being in the late 1700s when the daughter of the household married and had seven daughters. That necessitated a dramatic extension - a new wing and a whole new top floor intended as a huge sewing room.

"Now what we have is a large dining hall, two reception rooms, a breakfast room/kitchen, plus the actual kitchen, five bedrooms, two bathrooms, study and a playroom.

"It's fascinating thinking of the families who have lived here - their dramas, their highs and lows. Certainly we're reputed to have a ghost. Days after moving in, 18 years ago, someone asked if we'd come across it. And, not long after, my wife asked if I had heard the children go downstairs. I said I'd heard something, but the children were upstairs. Within a fortnight of that, I bumped into someone who had lived in the house in the 1930s and he, too, told me about the ghost. You don't see anything, he said. Just hear footsteps on the stairs. Since then, we've heard it twice. It's not a problem. It's almost as though this thing comes to check everything is all right. It's a warm feeling.

"The house was on our own books, had been on the market for more than a year. The chap who owned it - ex-Indian Army, in his eighties, a widower - was being invited to live with his daughter and didn't want to go. The daughter recognised that, so the price the property was on at was almost calculated for it never to sell. But after a year the old chap fell over his dog and died. Afterwards, I was talking with the daughter and she said she was surprised I'd never wanted the house myself. I said I'd always liked it, but not at the price we'd been asking.

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"You have to be particularly careful about a property that your own office is selling. I told the daughter that the way forward was to have the house independently valued. But she said: 'I have an opinion on what it's worth, tell me yours.' I said: '£95,000.' And her answer was: 'I'm happy to accept that.' I suppose now it's worth a little either side of £400,000, but I can't think of any reason why we'd ever leave.

"My wife and I have done quite well with property because we bought sensibly. Initially, I converted part of a corn mill which did us proud in the early 1970s. Then I bought a barn, which later sold well. I haven't done anything other than be picky, choosing nicely located properties that needed a bit of imagination. After that it was a case of being carried along with the market."